Mark Liberman and Geoff Pullum have had an exchange of subject-verb agreement argumentation over at Language Log. It all seems to boil down to:
Should that second sentence be starred or merely marked questioningly? Perhaps it’s okay as is. I still do remember the electric shock I received way back in the late sixites—or was it the early seventies?—when I heard George Harrison sing in Only a Northern Song:
When you’re listening late at night
You may think the band are not quite right
But they are, they just play it like that
It doesn’t really matter what chords I play
What words I say or time of day it is
As it’s only a Northern song.
So band in British English was plural, or at least in Liverpuddlian. As with data and criteria, I just learned to live with it. Dealing with constructions like “Pink Floyd are fantastic” or some such.
Posted by jim at November 30, 2003 08:50 AM | TrackBackThe alternative is "The Beatles is," which smacked my youthful gob, for sure.
Posted by: des on December 1, 2003 03:57 AMI've always felt that "the band" is mental shorthand for "the guys in the band".
The same goes for many other, similar expressions, where an entity is identified or interpreteded as the people who are part of it.
I don't understand why they (at language log, as far as I remember) seemed to equate 'semantics are' and 'the band (or whatever) are'.
The second is a group noun, treated differently in BE and AmE - in BE it can be either singular or plural, depending on whether you emphasize the singular or plural aspect. Includes things like jury, parliament, band, couple, orchestra, Microsoft etc. (company names). I was really surprised when I read 'the couple at the next table was smoking' in an American novel - sounded as if smoke was coming out of their ears to me.
Semantics I would put together with mathematics, stylists, physics - if it's a subject of study, it's singular. There are some plurals - e.g. at least in BE 'Her politics are rather conservative', but again 'Politics is one of the compulsory subjects'. And Mark Liberman says Geoffrey Pullum will be shocked to hear that 'semantics was used as a plural count noun' - I don't know why a count noun - the person didn't say 'Three semantics'? I mean, 'clothes' is a plural noun but not a count noun, because you can't have 'one clothe' - or can you, in Las Vegas?
Posted by: MM on December 3, 2003 01:14 AMMM: Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. It's a fuzzy demarcation between count, mass, and collective nouns. I notice that it's semantics, physicsn and politics, but rhetoric.
Posted by: jim on December 3, 2003 07:30 AM